The dog barked loudly
The dog let out a loud bark. iskaidekaphobia is a real thing and so is the fear of the number thirteen so airports often skip the unlucky numbers and go straight to eight
While waiting on a plane during taxi till takeoff looking out the window you may have noticed the giant number numbering the runway say eight which implies seven others exist at least. But this is a flight out of LOL airport in Nevada’s desert of nothing - there’s only two runways, which given the passenger load seems like maybe one too many already.
You might wonder aloud, “What’s the deal with Runway numbers?” Oh hello again, flying to Nook as well? Are you? It is a long flight, so there’s tons of time for me to tell you all about runways. Let’s begin.
So, before you can number a Runway at an airport, you need to build the airport and before you can build the airports, you need to plan the port. And what needs figuring first is which way to run the way. Pilots want runways with winds in parallel for physics reasons that we are going to skip - both because lift physics is something people really like to argue about, and this isn’t a physics video. Yeah, I’m recording a Runway video right now, hope you don’t mind.
But the summary is, planes take off and land into the wind because it lets them use less Runway and makes for safer and stabler landings in particular. Now planes can land with winds unaligned, but it’s unsettling to watch these crosswind attempts as Pilots do their best to face into the wind while landing on a Runway that does not.
So airports too want winds running with the Runway, but the universe is indifferent to human desires - wind whines as it wants. The simple solution in aviation early days was to build a triangle of runways, put up a little windsock and direct the pilot to the runway that paralleled the sock and thus the wind.
But as Aviation grew so did airplanes and thus their runways, making the triangle trick impractical for big Urban Internationals. But the simple socks still solved it. See, if you record when and which way the wind sock blows and with what wind force, you’ve grown yourself a wind rose - a clever little dataviz tool with the sock in the center of compass points for orientation and bars colored in size for strength and frequency of wind.
Though it reads opposite actually of everyone’s expectations - when with the lines showing the way the wind blows from and not to - physics stuff just loves to opposite actually. Let’s just agree to avoid physics for this video, shall we?
Wind roses reverse readings aside, they reveal that in most places, most of the time, most of the wind mostly blows back and forth in one direction. So that’s surprisingly convenient, thanks in different Universe. Oh, you did it for other reasons? Well, still, this convenient wind happens because wind is a current of air transporting heat from where there’s more to where there’s less.
The Earth is blasted by the nuclear heat of the sun, with the equator getting hit hot hardest, making hot air rise there as it cools out along the edge of space before coming back down, creating a big scale convection current that repeats in a pattern all up and down. And because the Earth is a sphere that spins, those cylindric convection currents of air on the surface twist clockwise north of the equator and counter below. This is the Coriolis effect creating coiled currents of air everywhere, which is cool but also physics trying to sneak back into the video - and this isn’t physics video.
All that matters is this creates the pretty stable pattern of Tradewinds, and if you’re planning a port, you need only know which way does the wind mostly blow. Though at some locations the wind rose reveals two frequent directions of wind, so if you want to constantly and safestly keep open the airport, you’re going to need to run a second way.
This is why many airports have an X or V layout, like LOL - they’re not necessarily doing double the traffic of a one Runway Port, but rather have double the chance of Crosswinds when the tower will need to reroute Pilots toward the other alignment for safer landings.
Once you have two of something, you need names or numbers. Sure, you could just go with Run 1 and Run 2, but Pro tip: triskaidekaphobia is a real thing, and so is the fear of the number thirteen. So airports often skip the unlucky numbers and go straight to eight. On the other side, 225 and 45 round to 10. Again, drop the zeros for 23 and 5. North and the Runway numbers follow the geographic North so when the North Pole moves the runways need to be renumbered and that’s why you’re painting a new number on the Runway
Now, with the towers talking to the pilots, they say each digit individually, so Runway 2-3 because clarity here is critical. This is also why the font and exact size of these digits is standardized worldwide, though there are disagreements between the Abundant Aviation agencies as to if single-digit runways like six should have a leading zero for clarity or if that leading zero should only be in our hearts (which it shouldn’t be anyway).
That’s the surprisingly good system behind numbering these numbers, which is always a delight to discover, unlike some other numbers I could mention. Though there are a couple of wrinkles to think about; if the wind mostly blows back and forth in most places, then most big, busy, urban, international airports will need multiple runways in parallel. But parallel runways have the same heading, thus the same number under this system, which would be unclear for pilots to say the least.
So all the agencies assembled to agree: if you have two parallel runways, they will have the same number but add an L or an R for left and right; if you need to construct a third runway, add a C for center. But with four or more runways, they will get the correct heading number with L and R, but the others they’re going to get the next closest numbers, but not exactly correct numbers, which is practical, I suppose, but also… it’s all slightly misaligned. It’s big airports like it doesn’t line up, like just try not to think about it. Okay, just try not to think about it.
Oh, we’re landing at Nook already. Wow, flights fly fast when you’re flapping about flying. Time to put this knowledge to use; our compass heading reads 42 degrees, so round to 10 440, cut the zero, and we’ll be landing on Runway 04. And since there’s only one runway at Nook, it’ll be perfectly aligned, no doubt about that. Oh, it’s five, not four. How embarrassing. I guess I need to delete this video now.
Hey, why are you painting a new runway number? You do that every few decades? That must mean… uh, runway numbers depend on where the North Pole is. So watch out, there’s a geography video inside this video called Where is the North Pole, Really?.
To find the North Pole, remember that the Earth is a sphere that spins. Oh, sorry, we already went over that. We draw a line about which this spin occurs and name each end the North and South Pole. Starting with these poles, we clever humans created a square-ish coordinate system for our spherical Earth, the detailed creation of which I’m going to skip because that’s a physics story for another time that took hundreds of years and needed lots of clocks and to make it official that London rules and Paris drools.
But anyway, this grid is what every modern navigational system uses to get around, with the GPS global positioning coordinates it gives. But if you were to use your GPS to direct you to the North Pole, so that you could experience the planet rotating you in place as the stars circled overhead and you pondered the scale of the indifferent universe and your tiny, tiny existence within it, if you took out your compass to double check that the GPS got the spot right, the compass points you over the horizon toward another North Pole. What gives, compass? Well, what did you expect? A compass is a magnet and magnets follow magnetic fields; that’s like their only thing. It’s not a math magnet. Your magnet compass will take you to the gigantic magnetic field spewing forth from inside the Earth.
So there are two North Poles: one for math and one for magnets. I mean, I guess if you want to be technical about it, there are three North Poles because the magnetic field the North Pole of a magnet points to is the South Pole of the Earth’s magnetic field because Opposites Attract. But look, we’re just going to ignore that because this isn’t a physics video and there’s been enough. Oh, it’s the opposite actually.
And yes, I know you can define more Norths, but we’re moving on. There are two Norths: math and magnets. The compass points to the magnetic North and the GPS points to the geographic North, and the Runway numbers follow the geographic North. So when the North Pole moves, the runways need to be renumbered, and that’s why you’re painting a new number on the Runway.